Political Suicide: Republican Edition

Elections in America are always an interesting affair; Invigorated campaigners, heated debates between candidates, impassioned speeches, and promises of a brighter tomorrow rather than the doom-and-gloom David Cameron preached when he entered No. 10. However, the biggest highlight of this year’s eagerly anticipated face-off between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney so far is seeing just how badly the latter can impale himself on his own sword.

Over the past few months news outlets worldwide have been cluttered with ‘gaffes’ attributed to the republican candidate. First was his catastrophic overseas tour in which Romney was meant to display his foreign policy credentials but instead questioned whether England was ready to host the Olympic games, openly called for war against Iran whilst in Israel, and stopped journalists from asking him questions whilst touring in Poland. Next came the secret recording that caught Romney telling his donors that his job as president would be to “Not Worry” about the “47” of people who did not vote for him, the same people who he also said were nothing more than welfare scroungers and “Victims”.THEN came the even more damaging recordings that show him depicting how he would “Bomb America”: “If I were Iran, a crazed fanatic, I’d say let’s get a little fissile material to Hezbollah, have them carry it to Chicago, and then if anything goes wrong, or America starts acting up, we’ll just say, ‘Guess what? Unless you stand down, why, we’re going to let off a dirty bomb’.
As if Romney could not shoot himself in the foot any further he then goes on to say, with regards to the situation on the Gaza Strip, that “I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway”.
All of these recordings can be found on the internet (Google search is your friend!).

The electorate here in England is of course no stranger to such controversies as many remember the “Bigotgate” incident when then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown was caught retro-actively calling an elderly lady a “Bigoted Woman”. This however, is an entirely other ball game – there is a considerably large line between calling an old woman a name and calling for yet another conflict in the middle east that may well end up causing the biggest war since World War II. Now that I have seen just how shambolic Romney’s foreign policy credentials are I have no more reservations in wishing that he stay well clear of the ‘Oval Office’, I just hope the American people can recognise this as well because the stability of the world as we know it may well hinge on the result of November 6th 2012.

With the Republican Party shamelessly self-destructing in this manner does President Obama have to do much work at all on the campaign trail? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not 100% Anti-Republican, I just despise what has happened to the party over the years. Historically the Republican Party stands for a prohibitive military, common-sense and smaller-scale government, limitation of social programs (some of which are unnecessary), law & order, and the survival of the capitalist system.
I can appreciate these values and are what I think the Republicans need to get back to. They need to stop adhering to the whims of religious fanatics and xenophobic reactionary groups such as The Tea Party and return to what they once stood for. Until that day, I will not lend them my ear.

I really would like it if Obama smoked Romney at the election forcing the Republicans to spend the next four years rebuilding their party rather than be hell-bent on preventing a Democrat from having more than one term in office – Which let’s face it, has been their objective ever since Obama entered the White House.

Obama had faced obstructionism galore. Quite frankly, before the Supreme Court rule that his health-care reform was, of all things, constitutional, I despaired. He has to be reelected and be given a little elbow room. The Republicans made of mess of themselves during George W. Bush’s terms. And then there was a miracle: Obama. Let the Republicans meditate at least until 2016. Only Americans can vote, but if the world could vote, Obama would be reelected.